Yes indeed. Stafford has the experience and weapons to take on the Patriots' pass defense. The Patriots look almost perfect, but their run defense is horrible.
You’re right that internal consistency isn’t proof. But the issue isn’t whether my framework “hangs together,” it’s whether the assumptions I’m using are optional metaphysical preferences or built into the very idea of explanation. That’s the part we haven’t actually confronted yet.
The assumptions I’m using aren’t arbitrary rules about how reality must behave. They’re the minimal commitments you already rely on whenever you say something is explained rather than just asserted. Explanation, in any domain, assumes that what depends on something else can’t be the final word. That’s not a theological rule, it’s the structure of explanatory dependence itself. If you deny that structure, you’re not just rejecting my conclusion; you’re rejecting the distinction between explanation and stipulation.
That’s why the burden isn’t shifting to you. It’s simply this: if you want to say the world is “fundamental,” you need to show how something whose constituents are all dependent becomes non‑dependent as a whole. If you can give a model where dependence bottoms out in something that’s still dependent, then yes, my view would fail. But so far, your alternative is just: “the chain stops here because I say it does.” That’s a stopping point, but it’s not an explanation.
And you’re right that none of this gets you all the way to God. The argument we’re discussing isn’t meant to. It’s only about whether explanation can end in a dependent whole or whether it needs something that doesn’t depend on anything else. The further steps; intelligence, will, etc., are separate arguments.
So the disagreement isn’t between “proof” and “interpretation.” It’s between treating explanation as a principled structure or treating it as something that eventually gives out. If you take the second route, that’s coherent, but it means you’ve chosen a stopping point, not shown that mine is optional.
If you want, we can now zero in on the real hinge: what makes an explanatory starting point mandatory rather than optional. That’s where the entire debate actually turns.
You’re right that simply labeling something “self‑sufficient” doesn’t magically make it a better stopping point. The real issue isn’t the label, it’s the kind of thing you’re proposing as fundamental.
A law, structure, or fact is always a way something behaves or is arranged. It describes patterns within reality. But description isn’t existence. A law can’t hold unless something exists to obey it. A structure can’t relate anything unless there are relata. A fact can’t obtain unless there is something for it to be a fact about. That’s why those candidates look like stipulations: they presuppose the very thing they’re supposed to terminate the regress with.
By contrast, calling something “self‑sufficient” isn’t meant as a magic exemption, it’s meant to mark a different category of stopping point: something that doesn’t presuppose the existence of anything else in order to exist. You can reject that category, but it’s not the same kind of posit as a law or structure. One is a description of how things behave; the other is a proposal for what it means for anything to exist at all.
That’s the distinction you’re asking for:
a law or structure is about existence; a self‑sufficient terminus is the ground of existence.
If you want to say “reality itself is fundamental,” that’s coherent. But then you’re treating the whole as fundamental even though every part of it is dependent. That’s not an explanation, it’s a boundary line. And that’s fine, as long as we’re clear that it’s a boundary line, not a deeper account.
So the disagreement isn’t about preference. It’s about whether the final stopping point is something that still has the structure of dependence, or something that doesn’t. If you choose the first option, that’s a legitimate stance, but it’s not automatically on equal footing with the second. The two proposals are doing different kinds of work, and that’s why they’re not equally arbitrary.
If you want, we can now focus directly on the key question: what kind of thing can serve as a fundamental reality without presupposing the very existence it’s meant to explain. That’s where the real disagreement lives.
